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A full-scale insurgency against Indian rule broke out in the Muslim-majority valley of Kashmir in 1990. Dissatisfaction with India had been building up over the previous decade, along with the desire for independence. In 1988 and 1989, armed young Muslim men began to attack government officials and Kashmiri Hindus; some of these young men even went over to neighboring Pakistan to ask for weapons and money. The custodial killings and torture by the Indian authorities of young Kashmiri men suspected of being insurgents made many more Kashmiri Muslims decide to seek military assistance from Pakistan, which had been hosting the decade-long CIA-sponsored jihad against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan.
The unprovoked firings on unarmed demonstrators by the Indian police and army in the early months of 1990—a recurring, if little-reported, event in Kashmir over the next few years—alienated even pro-India Kashmiris. William Dalrymple, the English writer and journalist, who had managed to pass himself off as a tourist to Indian authorities—foreign journalists were then banned from visiting Kashmir—was walking with his wife behind a peaceful group of demonstrators in Srinagar, the capital, in May 1990 when bullets suddenly came flying from the military bunker in front. He managed to escape unhurt, but many didn't. He had met a Kashmiri survivor of a previous, much bigger massacre who had been thrown, half-dead, by Indian soldiers into a truck full of corpses, which was then driven around the city for an hour before being unloaded at a police station.
Such cruelties—coming after the corruption and arbitrariness of Indian rule in the previous four decades—created a vast number of humiliated men in Kashmir, for whom there was something attractive about the upsurge of nihilistic energy in Afghanistan and Pakistan. So intent were the Kashmiris upon arming themselves and fighting for independence that their cultural and political differences with the Pakistanis became relatively unimportant. The first men who went over to Pakistan were still thinking of an independent and secular Kashmir. But as the movement grew and the Pakistani army's intelligence agency, the ISI, found more Kashmiris who were willing to fight for integration into Pakistan, the country stopped bankrolling the secular Kashmiri guerrillas who were seeking independence. They were betrayed to Indian intelligence agencies, and many of them also killed, by the more militant pro-Pakistan guerrillas. These new insurgents were seen as hard-line Islamic terrorists, especially after they kidnapped and killed Hindus and, later, European and American tourists in Kashmir. Among Kashmiri Muslims, who belong to the peaceable Sufi tradition of Islam, they came to be feared for their ultra-Islamic fanaticism, which often erupted into violence against women and other unprotected civilians.
Kashmiris, who had expected as much international support as had been given to the East Germans and the Czechs when they filled the streets in late 1989, were surprised by the cautious pro-India policies followed by the EU and America. But diplomats and policymakers in the West had their reasons to be worried. In 1994, as the Taliban achieved major victories in Afghanistan, the network of international terrorism began to spread. Islamic fundamentalist outfits in Pakistan became stronger; so did the ISI, which had come to play a large role in shaping Pakistan's domestic and foreign policies. As the Taliban began consolidating its position in Afghanistan, the ISI and the fundamentalists began to export jihad to Kashmir. The Kashmiri guerrilla groups were brought together by the ISI in an umbrella organization called the United Jihad Council. The guerrillas, who had come as raw young men from Kashmir, were trained in the use of light weapons in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and then sent back to Kashmir to wage war on India. The traffic across the border grew very busy. Almost every Muslim you meet in Kashmir has friends or acquaintances who went to Pakistan. The Pakistani involvement in Kashmir reached a new pitch when, in the summer of 1999, Kashmiri guerrillas along with Pakistani soldiers were discovered to have occupied strategic Himalayan heights in India-held Kargil. This almost caused a war.
There were other, larger reasons behind the insurgency in Kashmir, which lay in changes in India. Nehru's secular vision was undermined by his successors throughout the 1970s and 1980s; the democratic institutions he helped to create were enfeebled by the determination of his successors, notably Indira Gandhi, to concentrate absolute power in the central government and to deny federal autonomy to the many diverse regions and ethnic and linguistic minorities that constitute India. In the early 1990s India's nominally socialist, protectionist economy was opened up to foreign investment, giving rise to a new middle class of people in business and in the professions. As with most new middle classes its members were eager to hold on to what they had recently acquired; and their politics were on the whole conservative. As many of them saw it, India's stability had to be ensured by brute force, if necessary, in places like Kashmir and the northeastern states, since stability was good for business, both locally and internationally. It was an attitude most strongly articulated by the Hindu nationalist party, the BJP, which the new middle class helped elect to power in 1998.
Under the Hindu nationalists, India's economy was further globalized, creating a small new elite of business tycoons and reanimating the cultural and emotional links many affluent Indian-Americans had with their home country. The BJP attempted to give India, and this global Hindu middle class, a greater international presence by conducting nuclear tests and lobbying for a permanent seat in the Security Council of the United Nations. The government's obsession with India's unity, and its deep suspicion of internal and external enemies, went beyond the nationalism of the Congress Party. As the party in power, the BJP has had more opportunity to enforce its nineteenth-century idea of nationhood—one people, one culture, one language—which now threatens to promote more conflict in a deeply pluralistic society.
The BJP had kept up a steady rhetoric on Kashmir throughout most of the Nineties, when they were out of power, even as a harsh crackdown in the state went on: India, they said, had become a "soft" state, easily bullied by its neighbors and secessionists; they spoke of a "pro-active" policy and "hot pursuit" of terrorists across the border into Pakistan. In 1999 the war with Pakistan-backed infiltrators in Kashmir broke out, the first in India to be fought before TV cameras, and suddenly many in the middle class adopted the BJP's extreme rhetoric about the "Kashmir problem."
During the long years of rule from Delhi, most middle-class Indians had been generally indifferent to local politics in Kashmir; for the more affluent, the valley itself was a vacation spot, cherished for sentimental reasons. Pakistan was now seen as an even more implacable enemy. Renewed patriotic sentiment and the televised demands for ruthlessness against the Pakistanis for their support of the guerrillas affected the Indian army: a friend back from the front told me of a Pakistani soldier in Kargil whose arms had been cut off and who, as he bled to death, kept pleading futilely to the indifferent Indian soldiers to take his money out of his pocket and send it to his children and aging mother in Pakistan.
As the Indian army announced one improbable victory after another, TV reporters and newspaper journalists emerged as cheerleaders, and then in July 1999 when, under American pressure on Pakistan, the infiltrators withdrew from the strategic heights, they led the country in celebrating what the Hindu nationalist government described as Pakistan's military and diplomatic defeat. The jingoism—encouraged by Bill Clinton's visit to India last spring, during which he seemed to endorse India's claim to superpower status and reprimanded Pakistan—got louder after the news of further violence in Kashmir, including the massacre of thirty-five Sikhs in Chitisinghpura in March and the killing of over a hundred Hindus in early August.1
For much of the 1990s, when the Congress Party was still in power and Kashmir was ruled by a governor appointed by Delhi, Indian bureaucrats, often men of quality sympathetic to the Kashmiris, ran the state; they had made it possible for elections to be held in 1996 without fear of large-scale violence, and indeed with a larger turnout of voters. Since most of the popular political groups in Kashmir opposed to Indian rule boycotted the elections, Farooq Abdullah, the former leader of Kashmir's National Conference Party, who had been backed by India, returned as Kashmir's chief minister after many years of sitting idle. But in 1998, the BJP won the national election, promising, among other things, a "pro-active" policy in Kashmir. At a time when the tensions caused by nuclear testing by India and Pakistan in 1998 had barely lessened, the war in Kashmir began.
If the battles in Kashmir hardened public opinion in India, the well-reported arrests of Muslims, allegedly terrorist agents of the ISI, in various parts of India further fed Hindu suspicions about Muslims in general, and Kashmiri Muslims in particular. At Chitisinghpura, hours after the massacre of thirty-five Sikhs last March, I met a mid-level officer from the Border Security Force, one of the paramilitary organizations fighting the anti-India insurgency. He was a Kashmiri Hindu, a short, paunchy man. He wasn't worried about the prospect of large numbers of Sikhs fleeing Kashmir after the massacre in the way the Hindus had done after being targeted by Muslim separatists.
"Isolate the Muslims in Kashmir," he said, "and then we'll have a free hand to deal with them." He thought all pro-Pakistan guerrillas were traitors and Pakistan's henchmen deserved no mercy. He himself hadn't let go of any of the separatists he had captured in the six years he had spent in Kashmir. He had, he said, used torture to get information from them and then killed them.
This reflected popular Hindu sentiment about the Kashmir problem, where human rights violations by the military, instead of being punished, became the accepted means of reasserting Indian authority over the state. I heard the same view about isolating the Muslims from Pakistan and dealing severely with separatists when I visited the southern, Hindu-majority city of Jammu in the plains, in an in-terview with a leader of the BJP, Mr. Khajuria, one of the up-and-coming men within his party. Supplicants—job-seekers, men with big shiny boxes of sweets to offer Khajuria—thronged outside his flat, often spilling into the living room furnished with the regulation green carpet of government offices and sofas upholstered in dark blue velvet, with toy airplanes on display in the glass cabinet, just below large framed pictures of stern-looking BJP ideologues. Khajuria, a small round man with a big wart on the bridge of his nose, kept scolding gently as he pushed his way through into the room: "Can't you see I am doing an interview?"
He had been a leader of the student wing of the BJP at Jammu University, and still had the sweetly ingratiating manner of the ineffectual student politician. I could have predicted before the meeting most of what he said: India was facing "total war" with Pakistan which could only be ended by invading and conquering Pakistan; the ISI was now encouraging Indian Muslims to increase their population in India through hectic breeding; and Muslims were at best unreliable.
But I was still taken aback when—eager to make an impression, and bolder now in his remarks—he said that Kashmiri Muslims only understood the language of the danda, the policeman's baton. That was the lesson of the maharajah's rule. "Give the security forces a free hand," he said, "and the Kashmir problem would be solved in two weeks."
The Kashmiri Muslim politician Mirwaiz Omar Farooq observed when I met him this past spring in Srinagar that the Hindu nationalists were determined to hold on to the valley but had little interest in the Kashmiris, and knew very little about their long history and culture. Just twenty-seven years old, and slightly built, Farooq is the youngest of the leading separatist politicians in the Muslim-dominated valley. Most of his colleagues were in prison in the western Indian state of Rajasthan when I saw him; he himself was under house arrest, and a small posse of policemen were outside asserting their presence by checking under all incoming cars for bombs. On the clean-cut lawns where the trimmed tall hedges looked, distractingly, like giant hand grenades, a small group of men waited for an audience. Though much older, they were reverential toward Farooq, who was also the religious head of old Srinagar, a position occupied by his father, an opponent of the pro-India chief minister Sheikh Abdullah, until his assassination in 1990.2
At the age of eighteen, Farooq had become the leader of the coalition of parties fighting for liberation from Indian rule: the news, I remember, was greeted with derision in India, as a sign of Kashmir's political immaturity. But people grow up fast in adverse times, and Farooq spoke with the subtlety and skill of an older, more experienced politician.
He was among the majority of Kashmiris, he said, who thought the insurgency had failed, and not only that: it had also undermined an ancient and gentle culture by introducing it to the dangerous cult of the gun. There was now no alternative to a dialogue between India and Pakistan which would also involve representatives of Kashmir. Although he opposed Indian rule in Kashmir, and worried about the hardening of attitudes in India, he was also concerned about the rise of fundamentalist Islam in Kashmir. There was no alternative to a secular democratic state and rapid economic pro-gress. It was Nehru's vision for India all over again. Ironically, in Kashmir, that vision had been dissolved by the same Indian state that was entrusted with the great power to realize it.
Still, the Kashmiris themselves are quick to embrace the modern world whenever the opportunity comes their way. You can see movement and growth even after ten years of damage. Education suffered the most in a decade of endless curfews and strikes, and yet even so, it is now one of the most popular small businesses in the valley: a little room and a graduate is all you need to set up a primary "English-medium" school or "coaching institute." You are assured of customers: parents who can't afford anything fancier but are anxious for their children to make their way into the larger world of jobs and professional careers, their anxiety so great and widespread that even madrassas—the schools run by the fundamentalist Jamaat-I-Islami—have had to secularize their syllabus.
At the time when political activity had been restricted by the insurgency, Omar Farooq had been accumulating degrees in computer science and political science and was now taking courses to get an M.Phil. degree in Islamic studies. I went to the market in Pattan, a town a few miles north of Srinagar, which is regularly destroyed and rebuilt after each battle between the police and guerrillas, and found two "computer institutes" there: tiny rooms really, with a computer in each, full of restless young men—restless because there was no power and they paid by the hour to learn Windows 95. At Kashmir University in Srinagar—its vast green campus bordering a lake and monitored by snow-capped mountains—the lines of students for enrollment in the new semester are very long. Students with guns ruled the campus not so long ago; many of them went to Pakistan and were killed by Indian security forces on their return to the valley. There had been encounters and raids on the campus. The university, set up in 1948 and already in 1988 known as one of the best universities in India, effectively ceased to function in the Nineties. Most of the Kashmiri Hindus on the faculty left. The anomie and corruption elsewhere had infected the university: there was mass cheating on exams and the percentages of students passing their exams reached an unusually high 90.5 percent. The lowest point was reached in 1992, when the university awarded degrees without holding examinations.
But the India-backed drive to restore peace to the state after the elections in 1996 benefited those in education; the university quickly reformed itself during the brief respite it was allowed. The faculty was restaffed: more Kashmiri Muslims now occupied senior teaching positions. Seminars and conferences were held again; the students were serious. The percentage of students passing their exams was back to normal. Some of the Muslim students who went to colleges and universities in India came back after being continually harassed by the police; the university had set up new departments of biotechnology and geology for them.
For more than a century after 1846, when the British ceded Kashmir to a petty Hindu chieftain for 7.5 million rupees, the Kashmiri Hindus had dominated the Muslim-majority population of the valley. Then the land reforms of Sheikh Abdullah, introduced during his time as the India-backed leader of Kashmir from 1948 to 1953, and the spread of free primary education had created a new class of ambitious Kashmiri Muslims. But no new institutions had been provided to accommodate these Muslims; and the older ones were monopolized by the minority of Hindus who ran the schools and colleges and had a disproportionate presence in the bureaucracy.
At first, the abrupt departure of the Hindus from the valley after the insurgency began in 1990 was felt as a blow. But the space vacated by them had been gradually filled. In the last ten years, alongside the insurgency and the bloodletting, a new generation of Kashmiri Muslims had grown to take their positions in the bureaucracy, the universities, and the media; and it was hard not to be impressed by this new middle-class intelligentsia, by the journalists, academics, and politicians you saw in the valley—people like Abbas, my Muslim guide in Kashmir, Dr. Khan, the thoughtful scholar whom I had met in Srinagar, and Omar Farooq himself. They made it possible to believe that there had come to Kashmir, along with immeasurable suffering and pain, a new political and intellectual life; that as once in India, the struggle for greater liberty had turned out to be a rite of passage, an awakening that owed as much to modern education as to the still-strong Sufi Islamic traditions of tolerance and civility.
Pakistan—busy exporting jihad everywhere even as it slowly imploded—couldn't have been expected to be responsive to that awakening; the section in northwest Kashmir which it continued to hold was the most underdeveloped part of Pakistan, and it had done little for it. India was the bigger, economically stronger, more democratic country that could have accommodated Kashmir, made it part of its growth. But the gap between India and Kashmir has grown even wider in the last ten years. Middle-class India has developed fast after the liberalization of the economy, while Kashmir, despite recent revivals in education, has remained imprisoned within a basic economy built around horticulture and handicrafts.
The government keeps inviting the separatists to renounce violence and engage in dialogue; army and police officers speak routinely of "winning back the hearts and minds of the Kashmiris." But this isn't going to be achieved simply by sending Kashmiri schoolchildren on tours of India—one of the Indian government's populist measures, which, as one army officer told me, would not only appease the new generation of Kashmiris but would make them realize what a big and powerful country India is. That is a message that has already been conveyed by close to half a million Indian troops in Kashmir—the various army and paramilitary groups, some of whose more protected members, ten long years after the insurgency began, have done well for themselves in Kashmir.
In Srinagar, I met Mehbooba Mufti, the daughter of a senior pro-India Kashmiri politician from the state who now mainly lives in Delhi, like many other pro-India Kashmiri politicians. She has acquired a reputation for being one of the brave people who travel around the valley exposing and investigating the excesses of both the security forces and the guerrillas. When I saw her she had just returned from visiting the border with Pakistan near the distant north of the valley. The area was known for timber smuggling; and recently three timber smugglers, who had been caught while murdering some villagers, had fingered the commanding officer of the local army unit as their protector. That wasn't all. The fabled beauty of the women in the area—who struck Ms. Mufti as being of a Central Asian race—invited trouble from the Indian soldiers stationed there. There had been stories of prostitution and rape in the past. Most recently the commanding officer had wanted to marry one of the seven daughters of a peasant. The woman was already married; and so was the army officer. The peasant father, who refused, was taken away, and pieces of his body were returned in a sack to the village. The army said that the man knew about a guerrilla hideout and was leading an army patrol to it when he stepped on a mine.
There were similar stories everywhere left unreported, similar rumors too dangerous to investigate, since what was at stake was the "national interest"—it was the excuse the India-backed chief minister of Kashmir, Farooq Abdullah, himself had used in 1999 in the state legislature when asked by Yusuf Tarigami, the lone Communist legislator, to reveal the killers of fifteen Muslim villagers in Jammu, the southern, Hindu-majority region of the state. It was why, Mr. Tarigami told me, there was going to be no independent investigation into the killing of the Sikhs at Chitisinghpura, despite repeated requests by human rights organizations.
One of these organizations, Amnesty International, has put Indian intelligence agents and "renegade militants," whose patrons are the Indian army, along with armed opposition groups on its list of those likely to be responsible for the killings. These "renegade militants," so-called after the army began to recruit captured or "reformed" guerrillas for special operations in which the costs in human lives and the army's reputation were likely to be too great, are now the most dreaded people in the valley, more than the Jihadi guerrillas, more than the army and police officials in remote areas or the jumpy soldiers in their bunkers.
In the early years of the conflict, 1994 to 1996, the renegades had come in very handy: they had helped the army rebuild its intelligence network in the valley; they had helped track down and kill hundreds of guerrillas trained in Pakistan and Afghanistan. They had proved less effective against the Fidayeen, the new "suicidal" guerrillas, often Pakistani citizens, who had started coming to the valley in larger numbers after the battles of 1999; and a lot of the renegades had been murdered by the Fidayeen. They still threatened, and sometimes killed, the families of guerrillas living in the valley; or those journalists and human rights activists who were seen as too eager to report the excesses committed by the army. In return, the army and the civil administration looked the other way when the renegades kidnapped and killed for money.
But now, and increasingly, as the talk of restoring order and normalcy to the state continues, the renegades have begun to be seen by the government of Farooq Abdullah as a liability. One of them has become a member of the state legislature, but there are still 1,500 of these young men with guns on the government's payroll. A senior government official spoke of them to me as Frankenstein's monsters; the renegades were, he said, the most visible and hated symbol of Indian rule over the valley, and it wasn't going to be easy to tame them.
At Anantnag, a town thirty-five miles south of Srinagar, where the renegades were considered unassailable, I tried to see their local "commander." But he was away in Delhi—an unexpected sign of his status with the Indian government; the renegades had recently helped set up the BJP office in Anantnag. A polite policeman directed me to the house of another commander in the same protected compound. Parts of the house looked relatively old, and the rest was under construction, the money for it coming, it seemed, in installments. When finished it was going to be a very large house, its size and the high walls topped with glass shards making it look like something from an affluent Delhi suburb.
A young, good-looking man in kurta pajamas came out after much apprehensive peeking through the holes in the heavy iron gate. It was the brother of the commander, Rashid; Rashid himself was at his headquarters a couple of miles away, and the young man drove me there.
The headquarters was a large building that had been vacated by a Kashmiri Hindu family. It had been built into a mini-fortress, with boarded-up windows and a tall, corrugated iron gate, behind which, in the large courtyard, young men stood dramatically poised with light machine guns to repulse any attack. There were good reasons for their defensiveness: one of the commanders of the renegades had been shot dead a week before in a crowded bazaar, and some months ago the improvised explosive device hidden in an auto rickshaw and intended for the renegades had turned the house ten meters away into a huge mound of rubble.
Rashid was waiting outside the gate, and to see his bodyguards, teenage boys with oversized guns, was to feel the fear and uncertainty their presence brought to the neighborhood, to the tense men in the little meat shops and bakeries lining the alley. His lean, wiry frame, sharp features and thick moustache, his thick gold ring and blue jeans gave him a Bombay movie-star glamour and an impression of brute power until the moment he spoke. Then the quivering jaw and broken syllables betrayed his jitteriness: the jitteriness, I thought, of the doomed man; it made him an attentive host and keen talker. He saw me as taking back an important message to the Indian government conveying his sense of India's disregard for the renegades, the poverty and isolation to which they had been reduced, the temptation they felt to go back to Pakistan; and he shouted at the bodyguards when they showed up with lukewarm tea.
It was hard to get him to talk about the things I was interested in, which he mentioned indifferently when pressed: the bachelor's degree in science from the local college, the lack of work, the journey, out of no clear motivation, to Pakistan with twenty-eight other men, the training in light weapons in Pakistan and Afghanistan for eleven months, then the return to the valley as a guerrilla, the sudden disillusionment with the armed movement for independence, and the recruitment by the army. He was frankly puzzled when I asked him to expand on little details in his narrative—about the camp commander in Pakistan named after Aurangzeb, the last great Mughal emperor and persecutor of Hindus; the deception in Pakistan where he had to present himself as a fundamentalist pro-Pakistan Muslim in order to receive his training and small salary. But he went on at some length about his local patron, a brigadier in the Indian army. The brigadier had asked him to lead an anti-guerrilla operation very recently, and he had obliged by killing the two guerrillas who had infiltrated an army camp. He pointed at the thin, unshaven, middle-aged man in grimy kurta pajamas I had thought of as a supplicant awaiting his turn: he was the one who had covered Rashid as he went, guns blazing, into the little room where the guerrillas had holed up, and then had shot one of the dying men as he attempted to reach for a hand grenade. This thin, unshaven man, Rashid said, had been rewarded by having a police report lodged against him for "asking" a rich merchant in the town for some money. What, after all, could he do with the little money he was given by the government?
It was at this moment that something hit the high corrugated iron roof sloping into the courtyard, a deep, heavy sound, and everyone—Rashid, I, the three boys with guns—froze for an agonizing second. It was several minutes after the scruffy cork cricket ball had pattered off the roof into the open drain around the courtyard that I heard my heart pounding wildly.
Rashid's face had gone white; and the shame of that confession of fear was what made him grow wild when I asked him about the Fidayeen. He and his men were the true Fidayeen, he shouted—people who were being martyred for being faithful to India. Then he added that he was ready to take on the Fidayeen any time. All he needed was a "free hand."
A "free hand": you heard the words very often in the valley, and it spoke, as nothing else did, of the breakdown of communications, the end of dialogue, and the unthinking preference for violence and terror. Rashid had been puzzled when I asked him to explain what he meant by a "free hand," because he had already done so indirectly: he had made it clear, without saying so explicitly, that the government, and busybodies from the press and human rights groups, should turn the other way while the harassment of the families of the guerrillas, and the torture of suspected informers, and the mistreatment of civilians went on.
The idea of a "free hand" wasn't very different from what government officials themselves meant. The words were part of the official vocabulary, more potent than the previous talk of "pro-active policy," which really meant the pursuit of guerrillas across the border into the training camps, easy to fantasize about in Delhi but impossible to achieve without starting, as almost happened in 1990, a war with Pakistan. The borrowed phrase "ethnic cleansing" was even less effective. After each killing of Hindus, it was said that the guerrillas were engaged in "ethnic cleansing"; but, ethnically, the Sikhs and Hindus were no different from the Muslims of the valley. In the end, the few attempts at subtle rhetoric always collapsed into crudely aggressive demands for a "free hand."
The use of a "free hand" means that the cycle of retribution will go on for a much longer time. In Pattan, outside Srinagar, just a few days after I left, the local police station was attacked with grenades and rockets. This time, the frustrated policemen looted and burned down the entire market. I didn't go back; I didn't feel I could face the helpless shopkeepers I had met on my previous visit. I went instead to Jammu, the city of the plains, where, far away from the new mansions of the politicians and bureaucrats, thousands of Hindu refugees from Kashmir now live.
It was in early 1990, during Jagmohan's few months as India's appointed governor—and with, some say, his active encouragement—that most of the 140,000-strong community of Kashmiri Hindus left the valley. Jagmohan had originally been made governor of Kashmir in 1984 by Mrs. Gandhi in order to dismiss Kashmir's elected government; he had served for five turbulent years during which his aggressively pro-Hindu policies further alienated Muslims in the valley from India. His limited comprehension of the insurgency—as simply a limited law-and-order problem which could be contained fast—is apparent in his memoir about his time as governor of Kashmir.3 Many Kashmiris believe that he wanted the Hindus safely out of the way while he dealt with the Muslim guerrillas.
The Hindus had formed a kind of elite in the valley; they had a large presence in the bureaucracy, both in the valley and in Delhi, where government policy on Kashmir often came to be dictated by the fears and concerns of this tiny minority. Their connections with India, and their relative affluence, made them highly visible targets during the first few months of the insurgency in 1990; several government officials were assassinated by pro-Pakistan Muslim guerrillas who also committed random atrocities against Hindu civilians: rapes, murders, kidnappings.
Few of the approximately 130,000 Kashmiri Hindus who left the valley in less than two months after the insurgency began have been able to return. The ordeal of displacement was less difficult to bear for the professional elite of doctors, engineers, and academics, who, on leaving the valley, could renew their links with the outside world: they now form a distinct diaspora within India and in the UK and America, where large numbers of them have settled. It was the less well-off Hindus in the countryside who suffered the most.
A few miles out of the city of Jammu, on a stony, treeless plain, you suddenly come across hundreds of one-room tenements where thousands of Kashmiri Hindus have been living for the last ten years, waiting, without much hope, for things to improve. It was early spring in the valley and still cold when I visited the camps, but around Jammu the temperatures had begun to rise, and the sun felt more severe on the rocky exposed ground. The tar that held together the thermocoal roof of the igloo-shaped tenements had already begun to melt, and more tar was hard to find: you had to bribe the roadworks laborers for a little bit of it.
It wasn't the only thing that worried Gautam, the Hindu I met in one of the camps. He had left his apple orchards near Baramulla in the north of the valley in 1990 with sixty-five rupees in his pocket to come here. There had been no water for eight days and the plastic buckets used for storage had begun to run dry.
Gautam sat behind a window with iron bars, half-slumped on the single wooden cot in his half-sleeved vest and pajamas. The smell of burned onion came out of the tiny room where all five members of his family slept. The walls were bare except for a calendar with pictures of Rama and Sita; there were a few steel utensils on the wooden shelf over a rusty gas cylinder; a small television sat on a rickety stool. Outside, in the cramped little courtyard edged with an open stagnant drain, a mangy dog slumbered in the shade of the overburdened clothesline, and the tin doors of the public latrines were cut so low that you could see the blank face of the person squatting over the hole in the floor.
I wasn't invited in. Gautam, when he relaxed more with me, said bitterly, "We are like a zoo, people come to watch and then go away." He felt betrayed by Jagmohan and the other politicians, especially the Hindu nationalists, who had held up the community as victims of Muslim guerrillas in order to get more Hindu votes, and had then done very little to resettle them, find jobs for the adults and schools for the young. He had been back to the valley just once: he had been persuaded to do so by his Muslim neighbor who personally came to the refugee camp to escort him back to his village. The warmth between the Hindu and Muslim communities of the valley—so alike in many ways for the outsider, so hard to tell apart—had remained intact, and had acquired a kind of poignancy after such a long separation.
But when he returned, he found his house had been plundered; children were playing cricket in his apple orchard where the trees had been cut down for firewood. Then he was kept awake by fear on his first night, by the sound of gunfire, a sound his Muslim neighbors had gotten used to. In the morning he had heard the news of the deaths of five Indian soldiers in the gun battle with guerrillas. Enraged soldiers were expected any minute to launch a "crackdown." Gautam followed the young men of the village and took the first bus out.
He hadn't been back; he didn't know if he could. His son, fourteen years old now, had very few memories of Kashmir, had grown up in a different world, with a sense of injustice and the rage of the young. Gautam often had to stop him from denouncing Muslims and Islam.
I didn't see the boy: he was at school. There was a picture of him in a small plastic frame; with large serious eyes in his pale Kashmiri face, he reminded me of the Muslim boy I had met some days before at a graveyard in Srinagar.
It had been my first day in Srinagar. A famous guerrilla had been killed by the army the day before but there had been no public mourning. At the Idgah graveyard for "martyrs"—placed at the edge of a vast, bald field scarred with muddy puddles, and full of signboards with exhortations: "Lest you forget that they gave their today for our tomorrow"—there was one fresh grave but no mourners. The grave was of a young man who had been taken away by the police from his home for interrogation. A very old man sat on one of the other graves with a teenage boy in large thick-framed glasses, both hunched in the cold over a kangri—the little pot with charcoal embers they carried under their cloak-like pherans. The boy, Jamal, took me around, stepping agilely across the graves, his dark eyes somber behind his glasses.
The earliest graves in that Srinagar graveyard had claimed the most reverence and space: they were set in large plots, with bead necklaces and plastic garlands on them. But then the numbers had begun to rise, and the graves had been set closer together; the headstone engravings acquired a uniformity of message and style: the green-painted word "martyr" occurred in all of them. The boy pointed out the new grave to me: the earth still moist under the wrinkled plastic sheet; it had no headstone yet, but a narrow, freshly dug bed of yellow irises ran around the grave. Irises were, Jamal said, the flowers used to honor the Muslim dead in Kashmir.
He couldn't have been more than five years old when the insurgency began but he knew the names of all the "martyrs." There were some in his own family: his elder brother, who had been killed two years ago, soon after he returned from Pakistan; his father, who had died of burn injuries after being tortured with hot iron rods. He had dropped out of school, and now came to sit in the graveyard each evening. I asked him why, and he said, his large eyes earnest, that he wanted to be close to the martyrs; they had died a holy death in the cause of jihad, and were now in paradise. Later, he said that his mother was worried about these visits to the graveyard; she had been going to various shrines and making him wear amulets to prevent him from becoming a "militant" like his brother.
He wanted to know what Indians in India thought of their army killing the Kashmiris, and it was the guilt brought on by this question that made me stay longer at the graveyard. Windows opened in the rain-dampened houses overlooking the graveyard, and curious faces appeared in them, watching me talk to Jamal. The day, already gray, began to quickly die. The taxi driver grew nervous: the area was the stronghold of the pro-Pakistan guerrillas.
When I left, the image I carried with me was of the young boy and the old man sitting against the dirty overcast sky and the mist-hazy mountains and the flat, puddle-stained field; and it added to the desolation of those first few days in Srinagar, which—although the terrible scenes of the massacre were yet to come—had begun to contaminate my early memories of Kashmir, of the landscape that had once been a revelation of beauty.
On one of my last days in Srinagar—one of the many days of protest strikes, enforced by the guerrillas, the city surreally deserted in the middle of the long, sunny afternoon—I went back to the graveyard. There were more graves; and, with spring finally resurgent in the valley after many cold days, the irises were in full bloom.
But Jamal was gone. The old man sat all alone in the middle of the graveyard, and he didn't know where Jamal was. He hadn't been to the graveyard in several days, but his mother had come looking for him.
It was many days after I left Kashmir that I read in the papers news of a teenage boy who had driven a car full of explosives into the army cantonment in Srinagar, and blown himself up: it was the first suicide bombing in the valley. The boy went to a local school, and neither of his parents had known about his connections with the Jihadi outfits. He couldn't have been Jamal, who had only one parent, but it was while reading about him that I thought of Jamal again; I remembered the wide serious eyes; I remembered his talk of martyrdom and paradise and death.
The cycle of violence and destruction has been so swift and severe in Kashmir; the insurgency has poisoned and destroyed so many lives. Yet the insurgents' political cause remains as lonely and hopeless as before. Independence, which a majority of Kashmiris seem to want, or integration with Pakistan, which for many Kashmiris is the second-best option after independence, are not possibilities that any Indian government can ever consider without immediately losing the support of the Hindu middle classes. The European Union and the US are unlikely to risk antagonizing India, with its lucrative markets and resources and the trappings of a democracy, by taking up the Kashmiri cause.
All Kashmiris can hope for at present is a change in Indian attitudes, a bit more breathing space, a bit less heavy-handedness. But any change in Indian attitudes is unlikely as long as jihad-minded guerrillas based in Pakistan continue to wage war against India in Kashmir; as long as the chaos and anarchy of Pakistan make it difficult even for its army, which is currently ruling the country, to rein in the guerrillas or their Islamic fundamentalist sponsors.
The elected legislature of Kashmir recently asked the BJP-dominated central government to fulfill the promises of autonomy that Nehru had offered to Kashmiri leaders while trying to persuade them to help integrate the state with India in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Limited autonomy for Kashmir within a genuinely federal India might be a more practical solution than the one that proposes the creation of an independent Kashmir with open borders, whose sovereignty would be guaranteed by both India and Pakistan. The idea of autonomy, if sincerely pursued, might eventually find some support among Kashmiris, and help diminish the influence of Islamic fundamentalists in the region. But the BJP fears, with good reason, that the slightest concession it makes in Kashmir would encourage many more of India's disaffected constituent states to present their own case for greater federalism. This would bring to nothing the Hindu nationalists' longstanding efforts to redefine India's many religious, ethnic, and linguistic minorities as "Hindu," and to turn India into a proud and united superpower.4
The demand for autonomy was rejected by the BJP, with a speed and vehemence that, together with the repeated failure of India and Pakistan to even reach the negotiating table on Kashmir, indicate that there is going to be little respite for Kashmiris, trapped between, and within, the crude nationalisms and fundamentalisms of their neighbors. The tens of thousands of Kashmiri victims of the decade-long violence will have to wait much longer for even some partial justice.
But then you can't hope for much justice in the subcontinent, where fulfillment comes to very few among the needy and restless millions, and where aspiration itself can feel like a luxury. In Kashmir, isolated and oppressed for so long, and then dragged into the larger world of competing men and nations and murderous ideologies, more people have been confronted with this awareness in the last ten years than in all of its tormented modern history.
The number of young men like Jamal who attempt to dissolve the pain of that awareness in the nihilism of jihadi martyrdom is growing. At the same time, there are many more Kashmiris who wish to make their own peace with that pain, who are wearied by the bloodletting and resigned to their lack of options, and who now want the relative stability of the time before the insurgency to return, even if it involves living with the humiliation of continued Indian rule over the valley: the private, uneasy accommodations with the world which keep the deprived millions elsewhere in the subcontinent from exploding into rage and destruction, and which are being increasingly made by Kashmiris, even as, cruelly, the suffering of their first great war goes on.
—This is the last of three articles.
This Issue
October 19, 2000


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2016 Election: | Hillary's book | Trump's book | Bernie's book | Ted Cruz's book | | | 2016 Senate Debates |
The Greatest Generation, by Tom Brokaw (Click for Amazon book review)
OnTheIssues.org BOOK REVIEW: This book has become a classic--its title coined a new term in the American lexicon--but it has become a classic in the manner of many classics that nobody actually reads. So we read it. Everybody knows the theme of this book: Our parents and grandparents saw us through the Great Depression and WWII by sacrificing to build the future for us. But few people know the structure of this book: Brokaw tells the story of dozens of members of the "greatest generation", some just regular people, some who became famous later. We outline just five of those stories: the five politicians who on our website (two Democrats and three Republicans, although the famously anti-war Sen. Hatfield might prefer to be a Democrat today. Hence Brokaw is, as always, balanced). You can read them and get a taste for a book that is probably on your coffee-table or bookshelf anyway. -- Jesse Gordon, OnTheIssues editor-in-chief, May 2012
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Stem-Cell Research Makes Progress in Quest to Avoid the Dreaded Drill
Article Reprint
Could the days of the root canal, for decades the symbol of the most excruciating kind of minor surgery, finally be numbered?
Scientists have made advances in treating tooth decay that they hope will let them restore tooth tissue—and avoid the painful dental procedure. Several recent studies have demonstrated in animals that procedures involving tooth stem cells appear to regrow the critical, living tooth tissue known as pulp.


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Create a Website Account - Manage notification subscriptions, save form progress and more.
Your questions may be answered in Arizona Revised Statutes (ARS) 44-1236 or ARS 29-101 through 29-366 and/or consulting an attorney.
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View our complete fee schedule or call the Recorder's Office at 520-432-8350.
Obtain a form at most office supply or stationary stores.
Your question may be answered by contacting a title company and/or by consulting an attorney.
It will take 15 to 20 business days to receive your documents.
Your question may be answered in Arizona Revised Statutes (ARS) 33-1101 and/or consulting an attorney.
You may either come in and do a title search on your own or contact a title company to perform one for you.
You need to come in to the Recorder's Office to search and determine if an affidavit of real property value has been recorded.
No, you would have to contact the Assessor's Office at 520-432-8650.
All records in our office are located by searching our grantor/grantee name index. A title company may also perform one for you.
You can request a copy from our office in person or by mail at:1415 Melody LaneBuilding BBisbee, AZ 85603
Copies are $1 per page. If faxing it is $2 per page.
All property sales transaction require a completed affidavit or an exemption number. For more information you may call the Arizona Department of Revenue at 602-716-6843.
You can request a copy from our office in person or by mail with the book and page of the map. Copies are $5.00 per page.
Recorder's Office1415 Melody LaneBuilding BBisbee, AZ 85603
Once the owner's name/street address is obtained, you can perform further research by coming in to our office at: 1415 Melody LaneBuilding BBisbee, AZ 85603


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- Home
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Prepare. Plan. Stay Informed.
Missing & Exploited Children
For information on missing and exploited children and cyber safety for kids and teens, visit:National Center for Missing & Exploited Children
Identity Theft
This website is a one-stop national resource to learn about the crime of identity theft. It provides detailed information to help you deter, detect, and defend against identity theft.Information about Identity Theft - how to prevent and fight it
Lake County Crimestoppers
Simply put Crime Stoppers is a three part approach to solving crime. Crime Stoppers relies on the cooperation between the police, the media, and the general community to provide a flow of information about crime and criminals. Lake County Crimestoppers
Lake County MEG
The Lake County Metropolitan Enforcement Group (MEG) is a Multi-Jurisdictional Law Enforcement Task Force that focuses on Illegal Drugs, Gangs, and Weapons Offenses.Lake County Metropolitan Enforcement Group
Illinois Secretary of State - Driver's License, Vehicle Registrations, and more...
For general information about driver's licenses, motor vehicles, and rules of the road, click here:IL Secretary of State
For information on the graduated driver's license program for teen drivers, click here:
IL Secretary of State - Graduated Driver's License
Domestic & Sexual Abuse
If you are the victim of domestic abuse (verbal or physical) or sexual abuse, there are resources out there to help you.If you are in immediate danger, call 9-1-1.
Crisis Hotlines:
A Safe Place 847-249-4450National Domestic Violence Hotline 800-799-7233
IL Coalition Against Domestic Violence 217-789-2830
Navy Base Family Advocacy Center 847-688-3603
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Order of Protection Advocacy 847-360-6471Lake County State's Attorney's Office 847-377-3000
IL Department of Children & Family Services 800-25A-BUSE (800-252-2873)Lake County Counsel Against Sexual Assault 847-872-7799


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ALEXANDRIA, VA. (February 28, 2013)—As the national spotlight turns to increasing physical activity in schools and combating the childhood obesity epidemic through expanding opportunities for physical activity, the national expansion of the Fire Up Your Feet program this spring will create new opportunities for physical activity to, from and at schools and in daily life for students and families around the country. Fire Up Your Feet is a recognized program of the Let's Move Active Schools initiative announced today by First Lady Michelle Obama in Chicago.
"Safe Routes to School National Partnership, the National PTA and Kaiser Permanente share goals with Let's Move Active Schools around the importance of increasing physical activity for children, school staff and parents," said Deb Hubsmith, director of the Safe Routes to School National Partnership. "Fire Up Your Feet is a leap forward in creating positive, early experiences to ensure that every child can achieve 60 minutes of daily physical activity a day while also encouraging schools and communities to be designed to foster safe, convenient and fun ways to move."
Centered around the school day, FireUpYourFeet.org provides a full range of age-appropriate resources and educational materials to encourage physical activity to, from and at schools, with simple ways to track activity, earn awards, fundraise in a healthy way and stay motivated in a fun and friendly environment.
The National PTA believes that Fire Up Your Feet provides a great new opportunity for families to get active and spend more quality time together, all the while helping out their PTAs and schools.
"Our families care deeply about improving children's health nationwide," said National PTA President Betsy Landers. "The Fire Up Your Feet programs empower families to partner with schools, advocate for healthy changes around physical activity, and create an environment at home that supports the positive changes happening at school."
"Every day, every kid needs to get 60 minutes of physical activity. And the best way to do this is to integrate that activity into every day life," said Loel Solomon, PhD, vice president, Community Health. "Kaiser Permanente is excited to partner with Safe Routes to School National Partnership and the National PTA to change the norm in schools, and get kids moving again."
With the national spotlight on the need to reverse childhood obesity, momentum is building for school groups to find healthy fundraising alternatives that work. Fire Up Your Feet offers a healthy, easy fundraising choice centered around a goal of helping children reach the recommended 60 minutes of physical activity a day. Fire Up Your Feet inspires families, students and teachers to get moving while they raise money for their schools to invest in items like gym equipment, bike racks and many other options to boost physical activity at their own school.
In certain areas throughout the nation, the Fire Up Your Feet Activity Challenge program allows schools and families to track the minutes they spend moving each day and to challenge each other—and themselves—to integrate more exercise into their daily lifestyle. This program provides ways to earn rewards and provides even more inspiration for schools and families to walk more, play more, and improve their overall health and wellness.
Fire Up Your Feet is helping schools and families make healthy, easy changes that get everyone moving. The national expansion of Fire Up Your Feet is funded by a $1.76 million grant from Kaiser Permanente to the Safe Routes to School National Partnership. Fire Up Your Feet is an integral part of Kaiser Permanente Thriving Schools, a multi-year effort to make schools "the heart of health." Kaiser Permanente is committed to promoting the health benefits of walking as underscored by its Every Body Walk! campaign and now Fire Up Your Feet, which encourages walking to, from and during school.
Fire Up Your Feet is a core program of the Safe Routes to School National Partnership. It began as a pilot program in 2011 thanks in part to the leadership of Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota and is expanding nationally thanks to generous support from Kaiser Permanente and in partnership with the National PTA. The Safe Routes to School National Partnership's mission is to advocate for safe walking and bicycling to and from schools, and in daily life, to improve the health and well-being of America's children and to foster the creation of livable, sustainable communities. For more information visit fireupyourfeet.org or saferoutespartnership.org.
National PTA® comprises millions of families, students, teachers, administrators, and business and community leaders devoted to the educational success of children and the promotion of parent involvement in schools. PTA is a registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit association that prides itself on being a powerful voice for all children, a relevant resource for families and communities, and a strong advocate for public education. Membership in PTA is open to anyone who wants to be involved and make a difference for the education, health, and welfare of children and youth.


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Bear Creek, Fullerton GC capture 2012 Team Play Championships
Palm Desert, Calif. – "Hot" was the prevailing word of the day at Classic Club as Fullerton GC captured their first SCGA Team Play Championship defeating Red Hill CC 30-18 on Saturday. With temperatures reaching 106 degrees and gusts kicking up in the afternoon, both teams were fiercely tested over the 6,226 yard Classic Club layout.
It looked like the match was going to come down to the end after each team was tied 6-6 early but as the matches progressed on the back nine, Fullerton took control and captured 24 of the remaining 36 points. The title was sealed for Fullerton when Brent Kanitra made a 10-foot bogey putt on the 18th hole to win his singles match over Wally Sinner of Red Hill. "We have knocked on the door a couple of times but finally broke it down," Kanitra said. "It is a great journey and so much fun to compete in Team Play." Fullerton battled nearly 125 other Saturday teams throughout four months of competition in the most popular tournament program that the SCGA has to offer.
Bear Creek defeats Woodland Hills to capture 2012 SCGA Thursday Team Play Championship
Palm Desert, Calif. - Bears do indeed love heat.
Despite temperatures reaching 100 degrees throughout the afternoon, Bear Creek GC of out Murrieta prevailed to defeat Woodland Hills CC 35-13 Friday to capture the 2012 SCGA Thursday Team Play Championship at Classic Club. "It is a privilege to capture one of the finest SCGA Championships," Bear Creek captain Bob Clark stated. "To reach the finals is great, but to win is the best feeling."
Players were challenged over the 6,226 yard layout, which previously hosted the Humana Challenge. Bear Creek jumped out to a quick 9-3 lead led by David Wooding of Bear Creek's round of 70. The rout continued and Mike Giddings clinched the title for his team by winning his match over Dominick Bruno of Woodland Hills. This is the first title for Bear Creek for Thursday Team Play since 2000. Woodland Hills was attempting to win their first title since 1966, but fell short.


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The unfolding story of the Malaysian passenger jet shot down last week by an anti-aircraft missile over Ukraine joins a substantial list of similar military-civilian air disasters that have killed hundreds of non-combatants through decades of aviation history.
In the early 1980s, the Soviet Union shot down a Korean Air Lines jet, killing 269 people aboard, when the aircraft strayed into its airspace and was thought to be an enemy intruder. A few years later, the U.S. warship Vincennes accidentally killed 290 people when it downed an Iranian passenger plane after mistaking it for a fighter jet.
Robert Latiff, a retired U.S. Air Force major general and expert on jet navigational systems, told VOA that "when you have civilian people operating in the vicinity of a combat zone, it's likely to happen."
Devastating 'negligence'
Ukrainian government intercepts of social media comments made by pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine shortly after the Malaysia Airlines jet was struck seem to suggest that the rebels thought they had fired the missile at one of Kyiv's military cargo planes and downed it. But the Malaysian passenger jet was hit, killing all 298 aboard.
Latiff, who now teaches at George Mason University outside Washington, said the inexperience of the insurgents in operating the missile battery was telling.
"What I think happened was that we had a group of people who had a very sophisticated weapon system, provided to them by whomever, who didn't really know how to use it properly and didn't take advantage of other information that might have been available to them," said Latiff.
He said that with proper training and operation of the anti-aircraft missiles, military personnel would be able to electronically determine the difference between a civilian aircraft flying above a war zone and an enemy plane.
"I think it was a matter of poor training, people who were itchy to be in combat ... and may in fact have thought it was a cargo plane. But they didn't check and they should have," he said.
He called the separatists' actions "negligent," not "purposeful."
Numerous mishaps
The mystery surrounding a 1980 missile attack on an Itavia Airlines jet remains unsolved to this day. That plane crashed into the Tyrhennian Sea off Italy, killing all 81 aboard, but who fired the missile is still being debated. In 1955, an El Al flight wandered into Bulgarian air space and was shot down by fighter jets, killing 58.
In 1973, Israeli warplanes shot down a Libyan Arab Airlines jet that flew over the Sinai Peninsula and failed to heed warning shots. All but five of the 113 people on board were killed.
And last week's military-civilian air disaster in Ukraine is not the first there. In 2001, the Ukrainian military acknowledged that it shot down a Russian passenger jet, killing 76, while it was conducting exercises by firing missiles at drones. One of them locked on the Russian airliner after it sped past the destroyed drone.


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Sun Valley Solar Solutions has been awarded a 1.7MW solar PV project for the Gatorade bottling and packaging facility in Tolleson, Arizona.
The project attracted interest from six leading solar energy companies from across the U.S. Chandler-based Sun Valley Solar Solutions assembled the winning bid that includes all engineering, procurement, and installation services.
"We really wanted to find a team that could deliver the complete package-from design and installation, to ongoing support," explained Tom Schaefer, Director of Resource Conservation for PepsiCo. "While there were several very solid contenders, Sun Valley Solar Solutions delivered on all the key metrics required for a project this size. I'm confident that we've selected a great partner for this job, and thrilled that the project went to a local team."
Sun Valley Solar Solutions begins construction at the Tolleson plant this month. The project, which will be fully constructed by the end of 2013, is expected to provide over 3 million kWh of energy annually.
System components include more than 5,000 Canadian Solar modules, along with top-grade stainless steel racking from Michigan-based Applied Energy Technologies(AET), and 3 Advanced Energy inverters.
"Gatorade understands the positive impact that clean energy can bring to the bottom line as well as to the community around them," commented Curt Hilliker, VP of the Commercial Division at Sun Valley Solar Solutions. "Their leadership plays an important role in driving the acceptance of commercial-scale solar energy, and we're tremendously excited to partner with them on such an important initiative."


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Several Metro Vancouver-area sites, including White Rock pier and streets and alleys in downtown Vancouver, are featured in a hit new video by a Korean pop group called Twice.
The video for their "Likey" song was shot at several locations in B.C.'s Lower Mainland.
In one scene, a member of the all-girl group is shown holding a sparkler on the White Rock pier as a train rushes by.
Just one day after the video was posted Monday to Youtube by JYP Entertainment, "Likey" had been viewed more than 13 million times.
According to a post on Wikipedia, Twice is a South Korean girl group formed by JYP Entertainment through the 2015 reality show "Sixteen." The group is composed of nine members, named Nayeon, Jeongyeon, Momo, Sana, Jihyo, Mina, Dahyun, Chaeyoung and Tzuyu.


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NASA Announces 2013 Astronaut Candidate Class
By Space Coast Daily // June 18, 2013
Eight candidates have been selected
ABOVE VIDEO: "These new space explorers asked to join NASA because they know we're doing big, bold things here — developing missions to go farther into space than ever before," says NASA Administrator Charles Bolden.
After an extensive year-and-a-half search, NASA has a new group of potential astronauts who will help the agency push the boundaries of exploration and travel to new destinations in the solar system. Eight candidates have been selected to be NASA's newest astronaut trainees.
The 2013 astronaut candidate class comes from the second largest number of applications NASA ever has received — more than 6,100. The group will receive a wide array of technical training at space centers around the globe to prepare for missions to low-Earth orbit, an asteroid and Mars.
"These new space explorers asked to join NASA because they know we're doing big, bold things here — developing missions to go farther into space than ever before," said NASA Administrator Charles Bolden.
"They're excited about the science we're doing on the International Space Station and our plan to launch from U.S. soil to there on spacecraft built by American companies. And they're ready to help lead the first human mission to an asteroid and then on to Mars."
• Josh A. Cassada, Ph. D., 39, is originally from White Bear Lake, Minn. Cassada is a former naval aviator who holds an undergraduate degree from Albion College, and advanced degrees from the University of Rochester, N.Y. Cassada is a physicist by training and currently is serving as co-founder and Chief Technology Officer for Quantum Opus.
• Victor J. Glover, 37, Lt. Commander, U.S. Navy, hails from Pomona, Calif., and Prosper, Texas. He is an F/A-18 pilot and graduate of the U.S. Air Force Test Pilot School. Glover holds degrees from California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, Calif.; Air University and Naval Postgraduate School. He currently is serving as a Navy Legislative Fellow in the U.S. Congress.
• Tyler N. Hague (Nick), 37, Lt. Colonel, U.S. Air Force, calls Hoxie, Kan., home. He is a graduate of the U.S. Air Force Academy, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the U.S. Air Force Test Pilot School, Edwards, Calif. Hague currently is supporting the Department of Defense as Deputy Chief of the Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization.
• Christina M. Hammock, 34, calls Jacksonville, N.C. home. Hammock holds undergraduate and graduate degrees from North Carolina State University, Raleigh, N.C. She currently is serving as National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Station Chief in American Samoa.
• Nicole Aunapu Mann, 35, Major, U.S. Marine Corps, originally is from Penngrove, Calif. She is a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, Stanford (Calif.) University and the U.S. Naval Test Pilot School, Patuxent River, Md. Mann is an F/A 18 pilot, currently serving as an Integrated Product Team Lead at the U.S. Naval Air Station, Patuxent River.
• Anne C. McClain, 34, Major, U.S. Army, lists her hometown as Spokane, Wash. She is a graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y.; the University of Bath and the University of Bristol, both in the United Kingdom. McClain is an OH-58 helicopter pilot, and a recent graduate of U.S. Naval Test Pilot School at Naval Air Station, Patuxent River.
• Jessica U. Meir, Ph.D., 35 is from Caribou, Maine. She is a graduate of Brown University, has an advanced degree from the International Space University, and earned her doctorate from Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Meir currently is an Assistant Professor of Anesthesia at Harvard Medical School, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston.
• Andrew R. Morgan, M.D., 37, Major, U.S. Army, considers New Castle, Pa., home. Morgan is a graduate of The U.S. Military Academy at West Point, and earned doctorate in medicine from the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, Bethesda, Md. He has experience as an emergency physician and flight surgeon for the Army special operations community, and currently is completing a sports medicine fellowship.
The new astronaut candidates will begin training at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston in August.
"This year we have selected 8 highly qualified individuals who have demonstrated impressive strengths academically, operationally, and physically" said Janet Kavandi, director of Flight Crew Operations at Johnson Space Center.
"They have diverse backgrounds and skill sets that will contribute greatly to the existing astronaut corps. Based on their incredible experiences to date, I have every confidence that they will apply their combined expertise and talents to achieve great things for NASA and this country in the pursuit of human exploration."
ABOVE VIDEO: Space Station Live – Announcing the 2013 Astronaut Class.
NASA Television's Video File will include b-roll of astronaut interview sessions. For NASA TV streaming video, schedules and downlink information, visit: NASA.gov/ntv
• For more information about the International Space Station, visit: NASA.gov/station
• For more information about astronaut selection and training, visit: NASAjobs.nasa.gov/astronauts


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Ragg is a Scrabble word. Scrabble point value for ragg: 6 points. |
Ragg is a Words with Friends word. Words with Friends point value for ragg: 6 points. |
Above are the results of unscrambling ragg. Using the word generator and word unscrambler for the letters R A G G, we unscrambled the letters to create a list of all the words found in Scrabble, Words with Friends, and Text Twist. We found a total of 6 words by unscrambling the letters in ragg. Click these words to find out how many points they are worth, their definitions, and all the other words that can be made by unscrambling the letters from these words. If one or more words can be unscrambled with all the letters entered plus one new letter, then they will also be displayed.
Definition of "ragg" found in the Merriam Webster dictionary |
Definition of "ragg" from The Free Dictionary |
Definition of "ragg" from Dictionary.com |
Words that start with ragg | Words that end with ragg | Words that contain ragg |
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Shropshire in the West Midlands could almost be described as England's "secret county". Why? Because the people and happenings there seem to receive relatively little press or media attention. Shropshire just seems to quietly get on with life, tucked away as it is in the far west of the country.
But there is certainly plenty to do and see in the wonderfully uncrowded Shropshire towns of Shrewsbury, Telford, Ludlow, Oswestry, Market Drayton, and Bridgnorth. And what also makes the county so special is the warmth of the locals who are always glad to welcome new neighbours from far and wide.
The range of property in Shropshire covers much more than stone cottages, converted barns, granaries and farmhouses. Modern, luxury houses and flats (with high-specification throughout) can also be found at appealing prices in the county, as well as traditional semis and detached family homes, and more.
Charming and unique character cottages in pleasant rural locations are regularly available to buy, as are exceptionally spacious family abodes (many with stone kitchen floors, Aga cookers etc.) in the countryside, while in the town centres you can find some of the Midlands' best contemporary homes.
Shropshire connects to the M6 and motorway network via the M54. The A49, A5 and A53 all make the county easily accessible. London is about three hours away (by car), Manchester an hour's drive away, and Birmingham 40 minutes' drive. Manchester and Birmingham airports best serve Shropshire.
Although the county cannot boast an abundance of universities offering Higher Education (Wolverhampton University in Telford being the main contender), there are some excellent adult education colleges, state primary and secondary schools, as well as a range of private schools.
Good shopping options across Shropshire are easy to discover. In the county's biggest towns all the top name high street stores can be found. There are also covered shopping centres, shopping villages and arcades, complemented by exclusive boutiques and local independent shops.
Once in the county it would be wise not to limit your property hunt to the main towns, as in rural Shropshire you can find some absolute gems. Transport links to towns are good, so if you do decide to opt for a new home in the country, you won't feel disconnected - just peaceful, relaxed and perfectly content.
Find houses in Shropshire or flats in Shropshire with Rightmove.co.uk - the UK's number one property website. Rightmove is the best place to find the very latest property for sale in Shropshire. You can also find property to rent in Shropshire, a list of estate agents in Shropshire or view sold house prices in Shropshire.
Take a look at our current list of property for sale in Shropshire. Rightmove.co.uk lists over one million flats and houses to buy or to rent across London and the UK. We update our listings continuously. You may also want to see houses and flats in other areas of England, including Herefordshire, Staffordshire, Warwickshire, Worcestershire and West Midlands (County).


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Oh my goodness, this might have been the longest I've gone without blogging outside of the 3 month break from the game right before Cata launched. Anyways, yes I am still around, though work has been pretty insane the last month. And remember I do most of my blogging at work? Well mid April to first week of May, I was on the road for three weeks straight. Ugh.
I've been back in Seattle for about 10 days now getting back into the routine of a normal person. I have another week or so here before I start another round of travel, though this time will be for four weeks. They've brought an analyst on to the project to help me out a little, so I'm hopeful things won't be as crazy. However I'm having a hard time telling him what to do (my guildies can stop snickering now). Delegating hard! Well delegating hard when it'd be faster to do it yourself.
Anyways, I have still been playing when I have time, especially on the weekends when Team Glitter Kick gets into high gear. That is the name that we have designated for our guild BG group. When we die we die into a poof of glitter. It's pretty awesome because we do pretty well, plus its always amusing to feed the BG trolls together. I'm not sure what Team Glitter Kick likes more, having a healer with them or being amused by me going off on the idiots in BGs.
So along with Team Glitter Kick I've been continuing my insane quest for pvp achievements. Two weekends ago I finished up Master of the Battle of Gilneas, and crazy enough the very last achieve I needed was Jugger Not. I think I finally got it on like the 108th win.
I also finished up Eye of the Storm Veteran. I can't even imagine how many times that required me to bitch at the 10 folks going for middle. I still need Perfection to finish out the Master of Eye of the Storm achieve, but am going to focus more on my march towards 100k honor kills as well as getting exalted in Arathi Basin.
In other news our guild is still raiding though summer schedules have started to get to the point that many weeks we only end up raiding one night a week. That leaves the other night to fool around or do old achievements. And no, even at 85 I still cannot jump onto Thaddius' platform in Naxx on my own. I guess I should have known this, I mean its not like your toon's legs get longer at 85 or something. Sigh. Fail.
So what's been going on in the blog world? I haven't kept up with my blog roll the past three weeks so I have no clue. Are a lot of folks going to be playing Diablo? I think like 75% of my guild will be playing it. I'm probably one of the few who aren't. Am I going to be missing out?
Tuesday, May 15, 2012
Still here!
Posted by Keredria at 10:30 AM
4 comments:
- DarcnessMay 16, 2012 at 1:09 PM
"However I'm having a hard time telling him what to do"
That made my day! I can't make that jump either! Good to see you back. Re Diablo, I'd never played before and hadn't expected it to be as fun. But you aren't missing out too much if you never had plans to :) (and people in Diablo can still talk to you in WoW via RealID/battletags so hopefully it won't be too quiet for you)
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The Miami Heat have re-signed Dwyane Wade, the team announced Tuesday.
The Heat did not disclose terms of the deal, but sources said Wade received a two-year, $31.1 million deal with a player option for the second year. Wade also received a no-trade clause in his contract, sources told ESPN.com's Marc Stein.
The sources said Wade took about an $11 million pay cut over two years from the deal he opted out of, which was for two years and $42 million.
Wade took to Twitter on Tuesday to announce the agreement.
Home Is Where The Heart Is... My Home,My City,My House..#HeatLifer http://t.co/lMmP2JTDQY
- THREE (@DwyaneWade) July 15, 2014
Wade later released a statement on his decision to re-sign.
"I am proud to have spent every single day of my career as a member of the Miami Heat and to have brought three championship titles to this great city," the statement said. "I've been here through the good times and the hard times. I have confidence in the Miami Heat organization and the team they are building. To all the Heat fans, in Miami and around the world, I know you will continue to show support for our team."
Heat president Pat Riley also commented on Wade in a statement issued by the team to confirm the signing.
"Dwyane has been the franchise cornerstone for this team since the day he arrived 11 years ago," Riley said. "He has shown his commitment to the Heat many times over the course of his career and has always been willing to sacrifice in order to help build this team into a champion. This time is no different. I am ecstatic to have him back in the fold and I am confident that Dwyane, as always, will be leading this team as we look to contend for NBA championships."
With the Heat's recent moves, including getting commitments from Chris Bosh, Luol Deng and Chris Andersen and signing Josh McRoberts, Mario Chalmers and Danny Granger, the Heat have positioned themselves to give Wade a contract that starts at about $15 million per season. He is expected to sign for up to four years.
Wade played just 54 regular-season games in 2013-14 as he dealt with various knee injuries, and the Heat often held him out to rest him. He averaged 19 points, 4.5 rebounds and 4.7 assists per game on a career-high 55 percent shooting. He averaged 17.8 points per game during the playoffs.
He is taking roughly a $5 million pay cut from the two years and $42 million he opted out of to become a free agent last month.
Wade's pay cut, the second time in his career he's taken less to stay with the Heat, helped free up money to give Bosh a five-year, $118 million max contract and Deng a two-year, $20 million deal.


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ZenFone 3 Zoom
Catch the Moment
ZenFone 3 Zoom confines compromise to history. We've combined the industry's best smartphone-camera technologies and innovative dual-lens optics with its ƒ/1.7 SONY IMX362 sensor and 2.3x optical zoom camera, Qualcomm® Snapdragon™ S625 processor and ASUS SuperPixel™ Engine and its 5000mAh battery. The upshot is unparalleled smartphone photography ready to capture every scenario, the moment you need. Catch the Moment — ZenFone 3 Zoom.
Dual Rear Lens
It takes two to see up close
ZenFone 3 Zoom sets the new bar for mobile photography, combining two entirely new camera systems. A 12 megapixel ƒ/1.7 aperture, wide-angle lens with ASUS SuperPixel™ Technology is primed to capture everyday scenes, especially in dark environment; and a 12 megapixel 2.3x optical zoom for high-quality close-ups from farther away. Switching between ZenFone 3 Zoom's dual cameras takes just an instant, and the combination enables an all-new depth-of-field effect — for portraits that look like they were shot by a pro.
Learn more about
SuperPixel™ Camera
low light*
Zoom Camera
total zoom
* Compared to typical smartphone with 16MP resolution, ƒ/1.7 aperture & 1.12µm pixel size.
12x Total Zoom
Break through the distance barrier
ZenFone 3 Zoom's true 2.3x optical zoom lets you shoot super-sharp, close-up photos and videos from right where you stand, and with just a single tap. When you want to feel even closer, use ZenFone 3 Zoom's improved digital-zoom technology to ramp up the magnification to a 12x view — and with clarity that's hard to believe.
Learn more about
2.3x Optical-Zoom Camera
Seize the emotion
ZenFone 3 Zoom's 2.3x optical-zoom camera and 59mm focal length introduces a whole new way to shoot. 2.3x optical-zoom produce a high quality close-up, and the 59mm focal length lens brought subject closer to you by creating more depth to its background object — so you'll capture depth-of-field effects to rival those achieved by professional DSLR cameras. Combing with the new Portrait mode, the subject stands out more by softly blurring the background. Professionals call this the 'bokeh' effect — but you'll know it as your new way to capture stunning portrait photography.
* Portrait mode will be available with software update.
Learn more about
focal length
Portrait mode
8x Low Light SuperPixel™ Camera
Camera that sees in the dark
To capture real-world authenticity, ZenFone 3 Zoom packs a 12 megapixel camera with a wide ƒ/1.7 aperture and the latest Sony® IMX362 sensor. This combination, along with a large 1.4µm pixel size and a six-element lens, allows 1.25x more light to pass through to the sensor. This is further enhanced by OIS, allows photos to be shot with shutter speeds so as to capture sharper and brighter low light shots and ASUS SuperPixel™ Engine, effectively increasing captured light by up to 8x* — making ZenFone 3 Zoom perfect for night time shots and low-light environments. You'll also benefit from both optical and electronic image stabilization (OIS and EIS) technologies for blur-free shots and video every time, a RGB color-correction sensor for true-color photography, and true 4K UHD video recording.
Learn more about
low light*
camera sensor
pixel size
TriTech+™ AF
UHD video recording
Corning Gorilla Glass
lens protection
lens protection
RGB color
correction sensor
correction sensor
* Compared with a typical smartphone camera with 16MP resolution, ƒ/1.7 aperture & 1.12µm pixel size.
ASUS SuperPixel™ Camera
Night shot, low light & back light photos
With light sensitivity that is up to 8x of a typical smartphone camera, the ZenFone 3 Zoom is the ideal smartphone for ultra-clear and vivid night or low light shots and photography of backlit subjects. It has multiple features that give it such good light sensitivity. First it has an ƒ/1.7 aperture is one of the largest found on any smartphone camera. The aperture of any camera is the hole behind the lens through that allows light to reach the sensor. The larger it is, the more light is able to reach the sensor. Next, the ZenFone 3 Zoom has OIS that helps stabilize handheld shots to prevent blurring in very low light photos that need slightly longer shutter speeds to expose. Third, it has a large 1/2.55" sensor that has 1.4µm pixels which are among the largest in the industry. Larger sensors and pixels also contribute to increasing the camera's light sensitivity. Finally, the ZenFone 3 Zoom uses a powerful image processor known as the SuperPixel™ Engine that enables it to intelligently control the senor's light sensitivity and multi-framing process to reduce noise artifacts that typically occur in low light shots.
Learn more about
ASUS SuperPixel™ Camera
Pixel Size
Pixel Size
Typical Smartphone
ZenFone 3 Zoom
ASUS SuperPixel™ Camera
8x Low Light
ASUS SuperPixel™ Camera
8x Low Light
Learn more about ASUS SuperPixel™ Camera
ASUS SuperPixel™ Camera — ZenFone 3 Zoom offers greater light sensitivity than other smartphones thanks to its new ASUS SuperPixel™ main camera that allows users to take extremely fast and clear photos in night or low light environments. The SuperPixel™ Camera can achieve its 8x low light performance is consists of the following components:
ƒ/2.2 aperture
ƒ/1.8 aperture
(49% more light than ƒ/2.2)
(49% more light than ƒ/2.2)
ZenFone 3 Zoom
ƒ/1.7 aperture
(67% more light than ƒ/2.2)
ƒ/1.7 aperture
(67% more light than ƒ/2.2)
Large ƒ/1.7 lens aperture
The large aperture allows for more light to enter the sensor compared to other smartphone cameras.
4-Stops OIS
This extreme light sensitivity is then combined with an optical image stabilization (OIS) system that can help prevent hand movements from blurring low light shots with slow shutter exposures by 4 stops, making the ZenFone 3 Zoom the ultimate night photography smartphone.
1.0µm pixel size
1.22µm pixel size
(48% more light than 1.0µm)
(48% more light than 1.0µm)
ZenFone 3 Zoom
1.4µm pixel size
(96% more light than 1.0µm)
1.4µm pixel size
(96% more light than 1.0µm)
Large 1.4µm pixel size
Larger pixels increase the camera's sensitivity to light, and decrease the graininess of resulting photos — especially those shot in low-light environments. ZenFone 3 Zoom uses the Sony IMX362 sensor with pixels measuring 1.4µm wide pixels and 1/2.55-inch sensor size, which are among the largest of any smartphone camera sensors, making the camera excellent for low-light photography.
ASUS SuperPixel™ Camera
A combination of ASUS' new SuperPixel™ Engine hardware and image digital signal processing software that boosts sensor light sensitivity up to four times by intelligently controlling ISO levels while shooting and multi-framing noise removal in post-shot processing.
ASUS TriTech+™ Technology
Focus as fast as 0.03 seconds
We've upgraded ZenFone 3 Zoom with ASUS TriTech+™ Technology, adding an all-new Dual Pixel PDAF (Phase Detection Auto Focus) system that uses similar technology found in DSLR cameras. Every single pixel on the Dual-Pixel sensor is used for phase detection, enabling auto-focus that's so incredibly fast, actually the world's fastest and seamless that even the most sudden movements are caught in the act — even when the light starts to fade. TriTech+™ also features Subject-Tracking Auto-Focus for both photos and videos to keep the object in clear focus, and Laser Auto-Focus for variable distance and lighting clarity in just 0.03 seconds.
Learn more about
Dual Pixel
600,000 pixels for light detection
12,000,000 pixels for light detection
Traditional PDAF
Dual Pixel PDAF
Learn more about ASUS TriTech+™ Technology
ASUS 0.03s TriTech+™ auto-focus — ZenFone 3 Zoom has an improved TriTech+™ auto-focus system with new Dual Pixel PDAF technology as one of its three focusing technologies along with the second-generation laser auto-focus and subject tracking auto-focus. ASUS TriTech+™ automatically chooses the best technology to use depending on the subject, and achieves focus in an amazingly fast 0.03 seconds — the world's fastest auto-focus.
Dual PixelPDAF
Dual Pixel PDAF
Each pixel on the sensor is now divided into two phase-detection sections that can detect the movement of subjects by analyzing the variations between the light rays hitting the two sensors. Working together with all the other 12-million pixels on the sensor, ZenFone 3 Zoom is able to achieve rapid phase detection auto-focus even in low light condition.
Second-generation laser auto-focus
Which has 3x (three times) the range of standard laser focusing systems which can benefit shooting close up subjects within 1.5 meters.
Subject-tracking auto-focus
The system cleverly tracks moving subjects while the user is shooting, so they will never be out of focus. Subject tracking is enabled by default for both still images and videos.
RGB Color Correction Sensor & 4K Video
Capture the realistic moments
Smartphone photos are marred by unnatural colors, typically caused by artificial lights — so ZenFone 3 Zoom has a RGB color correction sensor to capture the true scene. It detects the type of light and automatically applies the best settings to achieve the perfect balance for natural looking colors. ZenFone 3 Zoom shoots video at up to 4K UHD resolution (3840 x 2160) — or 4 times the quality of Full HD! There's nothing complicated for you to do: just point, shoot and share your memories, all captured with incredible levels of detail.
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13MP Selfie Camera
Selfie with so much detail
ZenFone 3 Zoom has the world's most advanced dual-lens smartphone-camera system — and it's also a selfie superstar. The remarkable front-facing camera employs a 13 megapixel Sony IMX214 sensor for high-resolution selfies, and the ASUS SuperPixel™ Engine can further enhanced the light sensitivity up to 2 times. Screen Flash feature turns the entire screen bright white for brilliant illumination in low-light environments. Combined with the ZenUI Camera app's unique Beautification and 140° Selfie Panorama modes, you'll shoot selfies with more detail than ever before, add instant glamor and ensure that every friend is in the frame.
Learn more about
camera sensor
Selfie Panorama
screen flash
Manual Mode
Going pro has never been so simple
ZenFone 3 Zoom's Manual mode puts pro-level creative controls right in front you, for a DSLR-like experience that fits in a pocket. These include one-touch control over shutter speed, white balance, EV, ISO and metering, plus two features unique in the ZenFone range to ZenFone 3 Zoom: support for the professional RAW photo format, and the ability to switch instantly between the dual lenses for either 25mm or 59mm focal length. Shoot wide or close, and store every original detail — pro photography has never seen so simple.
* RAW support will be available with Android 7.0 (Nougat).
Learn more about
RAW support
switchable lens
Learn more about Manual Mode
RAW file support
ZenFone 3 Zoom offers photographers the freedom to shoot and store compositions in RAW format. RAW files save the full data of the photo captured by the camera's sensor and are ideal for enhancement with editing software, where users are able to uncover fine details in areas of shadow, or recover overexposed areas in the highlights, with much lower loss of image quality when compared to editing JPEG image files. RAW support will be available with Android 7.0 (Nougat).
Manual mode
This mode enables full control over ZenFone 3 Zoom's extensive camera settings. These includes white balance, exposure value (EV), focus, and ISO settings, and an impressive shutter-speed selection of between 1/50000 seconds and 32 seconds. In ZenFone 3 Zoom, this mode also allows users to override the automatic camera selection and choose to use either the 25mm, ƒ/1.7 lens of the main camera or the 59mm lens of the zoom camera.
5000mAh battery stays charged for 2 days
ZenFone 3 Zoom's incredible cameras will encourage you to take more photos, more often — and that's why we've fitted a high-capacity 5000mAh battery, it can even charge attached devices as a power bank. With this vast power resource hidden within ZenFone 3 Zoom's slim 5.5-inch frame. It can last for two full day of typical use with one charge; you'll simply stop worrying about battery life. Enjoy the reassurance of up to 42 days standby time, and shoot all day, every day — as often as you like. And you won't stop at photos: with so much energy in store, record videos in glorious 4K UHD quality for as long as you need; or set ZenFone 3 Zoom's Time Lapse mode to create transition sequences that capture all day and through the night. ZenFone 3 Zoom is even able to turn power bank, meaning you can use its seemingly endless energy to charge your other devices.
Learn more about
Up to
Up to
3G talk time
Up to
Wi-Fi web
Up to
4K video recording
power bank
Efficiently powerful, effortlessly fast
ZenFone 3 Zoom's elegant beauty veils monstrous power, including a 64-bit, 2.0GHz octa-core Snapdragon 625 processor, 4GB memory and desktop-grade Adreno™ 506 graphics performance. This powerhouse has revolutionary 14nm Fin Field Effect transistors (FinFETs) to deliver full-on performance while reducing power consumption by 35%. Then, there's the mobile and wireless speeds. ZenFone 3 Zoom has 4G/3G dual-SIM bay for complete flexibility for up to 300Mbps (Category 7) downloads via either card. ZenFone 3 Zoom offers ASUS BoostMaster fast charging 10W (5V/2A) for its high capacity 5000mAh battery. It automatically recognizes if the bundled adapter is attached and executes quick charging that can fully charge the ZenFone 3 Zoom in three hours or provide five hours of talk time with a mere ten minute charge; all while protecting the battery from being over-charged — and reversible USB-C for any-way-up connectivity convenience.
Learn more about
CPU process
power efficiency
Up to
Up to
Up to
Cat 7 LTE
fast charging by
10 mins charged
10 mins charged
USB-C port
5-Magnet Speaker
Unrivalled smartphone audio with SonicMaster
When you listen with ZenFone 3 Zoom you'll treat your ears to audio that you simply won't hear from other smartphones — because only ZenFone 3 Zoom has SonicMaster and High-Res Audio certification. With an advanced five-magnet speaker construction, metal voice coil and expansive sound chamber powered by an NXP Smart AMP, you'll enjoy powerful, emotional audio in every scenario. When it's time for immersive listening, plug in your favorite compatible headphone or earbuds and experience true High-Res Audio quality everywhere you go with ZenFone 3 Zoom's studio-grade 24-bit/192kHz playback — that's 4x better than CD quality. You're even able surround yourself with sound, with built-in support DTS Headphone:X™ 7.1.
Learn more about
5- magnet
low frequency
less distortion
CD quality
Smart AMP
Hi-Res Audio
DTS Headphone:X
AMOLED Display
Sensational display with the toughest glass
With a super-bright 500nits AMOLED technology, 1920 x 1080 Full HD resolution, and a color gamut that's greater than 100% of the NTSC color space, everything ZenFone 3 Zoom displays looks as vibrant as real life. ZenFone 3 Zoom incorporates latest Corning® Gorilla® Glass 5, and precision-milled with a gentle 2.5-dimensional contour to the edge, for a finish that feels as natural as your grip.
Learn more about
screen-to-body ratio
Gorilla Glass 5
cover glass
cover glass
Full Metal Design
The thinnest, lightest 5.5-inch 5000mAh smartphone
ZenFone 3 Zoom embodies the core values of industrial design and aesthetic beauty. Our engineering marvel blends highly advanced dual-camera technologies and a near-flat lens enclosure with a world-beating 5000mAh battery and expansive 5.5-inch display, and encases them all in a remarkably slim metal body with elegant color options in Navy Black, Glacier Silver and Rose Gold. Every aspect of ZenFone 3 Zoom's design, from the balanced positioning of the display to the precise alignment of the retaining screws at the bottom, has been meticulously considered and engineered to perfection. Plus it comes with a Clear Soft Bumper to protect its beautiful chassis.
Learn more about
premium metal design
thin edge
Clear Soft Bumper
ZenFone Series -
721 Awards. Worldwide Adoration.
Great products transcend time, and transform great brands into legends. From 2014 to 2016, ASUS ZenFones went from zero to 721 international awards, demonstrating the admiration and respect of the media. We are honored by this recognition, and dedicate ourselves to continued pursuit of customer satisfaction.
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Shellrus Sapphire
Sapphire Screen Protector for iPhone 13 Series
- The most scratch-resistant screen protector available.
- Guaranteed scratch-resistance at 9 on the Mohs hardness scale. (Just about the only thing harder is a diamond).
- Premium touching experience. Sapphire is smooth and cool to the touch compared to tempered glass and other materials — even the new ceramic iPhone screens.
- Our sapphire is GIA-Certified (Gemological Institute of America) just like other precious gemstones.
- The only full sapphire screen protector available in the U.S. (Cut from 99.99% pure synthetic sapphire).
- 0.23mm thickness.
- Full screen coverage.
Shellrus Sapphire is pleased to bring you exclusive smartphone accessories made from 99.99% pure synthetic sapphire — one of the most scratch-free gemstone materials on Earth aside from diamonds.
From our signature Sapphire X screen protector for iPhone to our new line of colorful SapphireShift smartphone protectors, we're honored to provide you with the only pure sapphire smartphone accessories available in the U.S.
Apple identified sapphire as the ideal material for iPhone screens way back when they were developing the iPhone 6, and though that dream didn't quite materialize as planned, we're deeply grateful to continue that legacy.
We hope you enjoy the same scratch-free elegance and smooth cool touch that Apple had in mind for you so many years ago.
It wasn't easy to get here, so we're grateful for all the support and kind words you've shared with us. Thank you for letting us be a part of your phone and your day.
— Mike and the rest of the team at Shellrus
PS - Click here to read more about our 99.99% pure sapphire.
Our story begins with the iPhone 6. That was the model that Apple hoped to create with pure sapphire touchscreens.
Apple had been using sapphire for years already — but for camera lenses and fingerprint sensors. Never for a surface so large.
Cutting sapphire crystal into dimensions large enough to cover an entire iPhone screen was an enormous engineering challenge, but the goal was worth it — an iPhone screen that was nearly impossible to scratch.
After all, sapphire is one of the hardest gemstones to scratch on the planet. Diamonds are one of the few minerals that are even harder, but diamond touchscreens can be a little expensive — even for Apple.
And so growing and cutting synthetic sapphire seemed like the perfect option. Not only is sapphire hard to leave a scratch on, but it's far denser than glass and dissipates heat much faster. The result is that sapphire feels cool and smooth to the touch — something that matters when you touch your phone as often as most of us do.
To make a long story short, Apple's designated supplier wasn't able to surmount all of the obstacles needed to engineer sapphire at scale.
And a little later, we were able to purchase the very same furnaces that once were meant to create iPhone screens.
More importantly, we were just crazy enough to pick up where our predecessors left off.
It wasn't easy, but thanks to some talented engineers — as well as perseverance and a little old fashioned luck — we're finally able to bring you the Sapphire X and other products you see on our site today.
It only took us about 5 years to figure out.
But what's a little time when you have the honor of being inspired by one of the toughest, most beautiful gemstones on the planet? To pair that honor with our deep love for all things iPhone just made the many unique challenges we faced all the more worth it.
Today, we're proud to bring you full 99.99% pure synthetic sapphire, and hope you enjoy the beauty and strength of these special crystals as much as we enjoy sharing them with you.